I don’t think they do; however, they do mention a family heirloom that included a unique “dagger-type” knife had been displayed on the buffet in Linda and Jerry’s home prior to the murders, but was missing after. The book mentions a conversation between Linda and her brother, which also happened to be the last time they spoke. During their reminiscing they talk about how they used to sneak the knife out of this set, or whatever it was, and play with it without their parent’s knowledge, pretending it was some sort of sword - I can’t really remember the details but I remember the discussion. The brother asked if she had it and she said she did and in fact was on display in her home. The babysitter confirmed seeing the knife on Linda’s buffet, because after the murders it was missing. As far as I know, it was never found. The missing knife was just one of the many reasons I believe the Bricca murder was an isolated, personal attack on the family by someone they knew and not a random, stranger attack.
There are only so many scenarios where a person enters a home without a weapon and ends up murdering an entire family: 1) the murderer went there not intending to murder anyone; 2) but the fact that things escalated so quickly would indicate the murderer was already angry when they arrived and was likely the reason they were there at all; 3) if anger - not murder - was the driving force behind the visit, the original intent was to confront the situation (and person) causing it; and finally 4) this level of anger, an emotion so intense it escalated into murder within minutes, was the killer’s biological response to one thing: a perceived threat.
This threat was so critical in the killer’s mind it created a life or death situation. It’s the only explanation for how a confrontation could result in murder in such a short period of time. It was critical enough it drove the killer there to confront it. Things quickly spiraled out of control when this person realized how critical a threat Linda perceived them to be to her life as well. If this person was the wife, Linda was a threat to her livelihood, her children’s lives, her marriage and her future; the wife was a threat to Linda’s perceived happiness, a future with a man who made her miserable in a life she never wanted, or a future with a man she does want but can’t have.
The confrontation became a battle of wills between the women, each representing a perceived critical life or death threat to the other. It became apparent to both early on that it would take more than a simple confrontation to make the other go away. Someone had to make a move, and I believe it was Fred’s wife, who obviously had much more to lose, and driven by a level of anger, desperation and fear much greater than anything Linda must’ve felt.
I believe Fred’s wife marched right into the home while Jerry was out running errands intent on confronting Linda as soon as she opened the door, and upon seeing the younger more beautiful Linda, prancing confidently around the house in her lingerie, the image of her husband with her, turned her anger into rage. She realized there was no way for her to compete with this woman. She was older, her body somewhat ravaged from giving birth to Fred’s five children. Who would want her? I believe this confrontation happened in the living room with all of these images and thoughts flashing through her mind, overwhelming her sensibilities. A split second decision to eliminate the threat completely and permanently was made impulsively right where she stood, right next to the buffet, the family heirloom and the dagger.
This is where things get muddled up for me. I read the book on my kindle so it’s not as easy to flip through the chapters to find certain dates and times, so I’m mostly drawing from memory and I’ve only read the book once (I’ve already read three other books since this one).
I believe Jerry was last seen around 9:30 taking out the trash, which he did after returning home from the store (and I believe before he went inside, which makes the most sense). I know he spoke to his coworker about picking him up to go to the airport around 6:30ish, during which the friend said everything seemed fine. I believe the neighbor heard a “thump” around 9:15ish. If that’s true, then the confrontation occurred after Jerry left to run errands but before he got home and took out the trash. If he only ran to the store, that would support my belief things escalated very quickly after Fred’s wife barged in to confront Linda and all hell broke loose, literally within 30 minutes or so assuming Jerry didn’t go into the house before taking out the trash at 9:30 and the neighbors heard the first thump at 9:15.
I think (and I’m not at all sure), that it was around 10:30 or close to 11 that a wet, disheveled and exasperated Fred was seen by the store owner making two back to back calls from the pay phone that went unanswered, then quickly left without acknowledging the owner - which was unusual according to him, as Fred was a frequent and friendly patron. It was also around this time, maybe a little earlier, that the same neighbor who heard the thump peered out her window and noticed the Bricca’s back door wide open with the TV on (the back door was not open when the bodies were found).
This more than anything supports the theory that there was more than one killer. If the back door was seen wide open with the TV on, where were the dogs? Wouldn’t they have run out into the yard? And if the killer’s were strangers, wouldn’t they have run out the door barking hysterically if the killer left the door open as he ran from the house? But they didn’t. They noticed the back door open at 10:15, no dogs barked or ran from the house, and Fred was seen shortly after making calls from the pay phone by the store owner. To me, this means someone left the house in a hurry for some reason (to make a call?) while another person was still in the house, someone the dogs trusted, and that the Bricca’s were likely still alive.
And all of this is based on the assumption that the first thump heard at 9:15 had anything to do with anything. The thump could have just been Jerry closing his car door after getting home from the store. If that’s all it was then the whole thing likely started around 10. Still, whether it happened before or after Jerry took out the trash, it doesn’t change things much, it just pushes the time it began back an hour.
But for the sake of argument, let’s just assume I’m right and the thump was part of the murder timeline. If it started before Jerry got home, then the thump was a confrontation with Linda. Jerry would’ve walked into the house to discover Linda and the killer (or accomplice), and Debbie, who probably witnessed all of this because the purpose of the visit was to have a confrontation, not commit a premeditated murder. So Debbie was probably there when it all unfolded, and it happened so quickly and unexpectedly no one thought to send Debbie to her room.
And somewhere between Jerry taking out the trash and the neighbors seeing the back door open, Jerry was subdued. The wife couldn’t have done that, obviously. There is really only one thing that could have stopped Jerry in his tracks and prevented him from defending himself and family from being murdered, and that’s Debbie. It’s possible that Fred arrived at the house shortly after his wife, walked in through the back door (as he had likely done many many times before), saw his stunned wife with the dagger and a bleeding Linda on the floor. Then Jerry drives up.
How and through which door Jerry normally entered the house I’m not sure. Most people don’t enter their homes through the front door. He didn’t park in the garage. Linda did. Did he take the trash cans out of the garage and go into the house from there, shutting the garage door behind him? Did he enter through the back door?
However he did, like Fred, he likely walked into a scene that shocked him. He probably didn’t even have time to process what he saw before he was somehow subdued or confronted with a situation that for forced him into immediate compliance. Linda was hurt and bloody, someone has Debbie, the same person who clearly was not above violence. Jerry, a rational and logical thinker, reacted as any parent would. He was either knocked out as soon as he walked in and tied up, or allowed himself to be tied up to save Debbie. If Fred’s wife was there, I can see how Jerry might agree to this, the presence of a woman giving him a false sense of security that ultimately things would be ok. Surely Fred’s wife wouldn’t hurt a child or allow Fred to actually kill them. But Jerry also likely didn’t know that it was Fred’s wife who stabbed Linda.
There are only so many things that could occur for all of these things to be true. Assumptions and timelines aside, we know these things are fact:
1) Jerry was seen taking out the trash at 9:30 and everything appeared normal, waving to the neighbor before going inside
2) A preoccupied and exasperated Fred was seen making two phone calls in succession from the pay phone at a store near the Bricca’s home right before the owner closed the store at 11. He did not have any blood on him.
3) Around the same time neighbors saw the back door wide open before they went to bed. They even rationalized later how they know it was open because they saw the TV, and the TV cannot be seen when the door is closed. What they didn’t see (or hear) were the dogs. The door was not open and the dogs were alive when the bodies were discovered. Why didn’t they bark or run out of the noise when the back door was open?
4) We know at some point Linda and Jerry were tied with tape. Jerry was still gagged when the family was discovered two days later, residue from the tape still on his hands. The width of the tape was not standard and, according to 3M, was used by veterinarians. The killer took the time to remove the tape before leaving. Why?
5) There was a dagger-type knife displayed on the Bricca’s buffet prior to the murders that was missing after the murders; like the tape, it was never found
6) Two separate witnesses reported seeing a car parked outside of the Bricca’s home around midnight. Either two or three people were seen in the car: two men (or one) and a woman. The woman appeared frightened. Some believe this woman was there to watch the daughter. This makes no sense to me.
First, why would any woman agree to tag along with two men intent on roughing up a family just to watch their kid unless she had a stake in the game? But what? Wouldn’t she be afraid the little girl could identify her after all was said and done? Second, for them to know there was a little girl at all, they would have to know the family. This means the family was targeted for some reason. If it wasn’t money or Linda, was it a hit? If it was a hit, wouldn’t they bring a weapon? Would hitmen really bring a babysitter to witness a murder an entire family, including the kid? And who besides Fred would hire hitmen? Doesn’t it seem more likely that this was never intended to be a murder, and that the woman became a part of it by accident? Wouldn’t the dogs have gone crazy?
7) The house had been moderately ransacked. The police assumed it was to stage the scene.
I’m not so sure about this. I think the killer was actually looking to dispose of evidence of his/her existence: letters, maybe results from a pregnancy test. Perhaps Linda threatened to write a letter to Fred’s wife. Fred’s wife may have written a letter to Linda. I don’t think it was staged. What would be the point of staging a scene unless the killer felt he would one day be in a position to present a stranger theory of the crime? If the crime was committed by a stranger, wouldn’t he be inclined to present a theory that it wasn’t a stranger? If Fred was the killer and staged the scene to throw the cops off his trail, how would he explain he knew the house was ransacked without putting himself at the crime scene? The only thing that makes sense is the scene wasn’t staged at all.
Like I said, I’ve gone over these things over and over trying to come up with something that could tie all of these things we know are facts together. The only thing that makes any sense to me is someone went there NOT intent on murder or they would’ve brought a weapon. So that eliminates a hit. We know more than one person was involved because the dogs didn’t bark or run out of the back door when it was open. We also know one of the intruders was a woman. The likelihood the person who showed up for a confrontation without a weapon was not the person who committed the murder. If we know one was a woman and one was a man, I think it’s safe to assume the woman was probably not the murderer. It’s also safe to assume that the man did not go there expecting to murder anyone for the same reason the woman didn’t: he also didn’t bring a weapon. What he DID have, however, is tape, tape used by vets. We know he had this long before the witnesses saw the woman being taken away because Jerry would’ve had to be restrained between 9:30 and midnight, when the witnesses saw them.
It’s most likely the man showed up not to murder but to stop the confrontation from happening at all, a confrontation that would have never occurred but through his own selfish actions. But by the time he got there, it was too late. I think he realized almost immediately what needed to be done when he saw Linda already hurt and bleeding. Why would he not call the police or try to save Linda’s life unless losing the person who did her harm was worse to him than losing Linda herself, worse than killing Debbie? This murder was a desperate act committed by a desperate man, who recognized the only way to save his own family was to completely eliminate another.
It’s weird that I had never heard of the Percy case before. I went to Northwestern for graduate school, lived in Evanston, worked in local government and studied public affairs, including criminal justice. Such a small geographic area, all the north shore suburbs. Never heard of it.
